Arguably, one of the most crucial concepts in the history of psychology is that of Pavlov’s, with his notion of conditioning. Conditioning plays a key role in psychological theory, to the extent that it indicates certain behaviors can be learned, and therefore, conversely, unlearned. This opens up decisive questions in regards to the study of the psyche: for here social relationships and roles of authority and power take on a crucial role in shaping how individuals act. This is precisely what Pavlov’s experiments indicated.
The way in which social relationships help shape consciousness, the unconscious and the psyche is certainly a key role in the history of psychology: for example, Freud’s psychology follows from the importance of the familial role in regards to the psyche. Pavlov’s experiments, in this regard, arguably radicalize the Freudian thesis in my view: no longer is the familial relationship the crucial relationship, but essentially any social relationship can take on this foundational role in informing the psyche. This gives us a new vision of the psyche as something that is ongoing and developing, subject to the vicissitudes of human existence, either for better or for worse.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Pavlov and Conditioning".
In other words, for Pavlov the conditioned stimulus emerges alongside the phenomenon of an unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus is perhaps merely biological in origin, whereas the conditioned stimulus essentially could potentially be anything; furthermore, this generates a conditioned response. To the extent that the conditioned stimulus and conditioned response relationship holds, it has extreme consequences in regards to the extent to which power relationships become the most important factor in the individual’s psychological life. Namely, power relationships in this context mean the ability to induce conditioned responses from the deliberate utilization of conditioned stimulus.
Countless personal examples seem to support the importance of this concept. For example, from my own life, I know the excitement that I feel when, for example, Apple releases a new Ipad device. What Pavlov’s experiments force us to recognize in such cases is to consider questions: where does this response of excitement come from? Certainly, there is no endemic biological need to have an Ipad; it is rather an entirely social phenomenon. Here, the presentation of the item to the public creates almost an act of mass hysteria: this would seem precisely to be what Pavlov indicates with his behaviorist theories.
This leads to broader reflections on our own lives in a consumerist culture: the dominance of marketing and advertisement seems to play according to precisely these rules. Namely, marketers need to understand the psychology of their customers: when we are confronted on television by various advertisements for goods, this is clearly an example of behaviorist principles at stake.
This leads me to further reflection: in a certain sense, there is no limit to the relationships in our society which seem to work according to this conditioning effect. Consider for example politics: political ideology and the democratic voting process seems to follow exactly these principles. Political leaders will thus play on notions of fear, citing terrorism, in order to elicit a response from the public: the stimulus can be some video footage of some act, while the response is to continue to give support to the military-industrial complex.
At the same time, however, Pavlov’s experiments led me to think about what kind of events can be considered genuine and authentic to the extent that they are not conditioned; here, I would have to state that it is love for another. Love arises suddenly, unexpectedly, and sometimes even against one’s own best self-interests or that of the other. Accordingly, behaviorism seems to be most relevant as a theory precisely when relationships of inequality and power are at stake, as opposed to egalitarian relationships based on love and respect. Pavlov’s concepts about conditioning therefore become crucial to understanding psychology, because of their prevalence in all aspects of our society; at the same time, they do not explain everything about the human psyche.
